Editor TLN
In Colombia, the peace agreement between the FARC and the government significantly reduced violence in conflict zones and with it opened up the opportunity to find hidden territories, which today are undiscovered tourist jewels. The Guape canyon, in the department of Meta, hopes to be one of the great attractions of the country so that its municipality, La Uribe, goes from being the old “capital” of the FARC to a new power of tourism.
-Silence! Close your eyes.
Carlos Cruz silences the group of tourists he guides. The guácharos, the cave birds, fly over the canyon and echo their chirping on the walls that reach up to 120 meters high. When the torrents, the waterfalls, the chirps, the bats, and the giant spiders have passed, he asks:
-What have you felt?
Some say they have entered a movie. Others claim to have passed into a relaxing trance state. Most agree that they had never experienced anything like it.
Carlos smiles. They believe in the maxim that for every happy tourist, two more will come. He is 31 years old, he is from the central Colombian department of Meta and until six years ago he had never been to Cañón del Guape. “The first time I went down it was crazy. I said wow! And I asked myself: is this really in La Uribe?” He recounts from the float with which he descends the river.
The young people from Uribense did not know their municipality. Anti-personnel mines and the danger of being caught in the middle of war hid their own natural wonders for decades. Giovany Ángel arrived there, an explorer who has also been a journalist, soldier, and survivor of a parachute accident that left him immobile for two years.
With the enthusiasm of the 2016 peace agreement between the State and the FARC, Giovany took up the machete and began to open roads through hidden territories in the midst of the conflict and difficult to access due to geographical conditions. On one of those expeditions he found the Guape Canyon: “Everyone tells me I’m crazy, but I’ve only found wonders.” Among his achievements: dozens of waterfalls, a pink lagoon, but, above all, having convinced the communities that tourism is a way out of the conflict.
In Meta, 35% of its population is a victim of the conflict, like Carlos, who was displaced by threats and never heard from one of his brothers who joined the FARC, which was the largest guerrilla in Latin America.
La Uribe is known as the former stronghold of the FARC. A place, at the foot of the eastern mountain range, difficult to access and surrounded by mountains. In the north is the páramo of Sumapaz, through which one reaches Bogotá. In the west, the mountain range separates La Uribe from the department of Huila, via the Pacific Ocean and an important route for illicit economies. And in the south, separated by the La Macarena mountain range, is Caquetá, the gateway to the Amazon.
The FARC secretariat was based in La Uribe, which is why it was the venue for peace talks with the State in 1982 and 1998. Victims often use the same word to describe what they experienced until the 2016 peace agreement: capsize
Segundo Mutumbajoy, a reinstated ex-combatant, lives there today. His new life consists of working as security for the demobilized FARC commanders, now threatened. Since 2016, more than 350 peace signers have been killed, according to Indepaz.
Segundo moves with a motorcycle through the area and walks greeting the neighbors, he is already one more. He is happy with the new life that La Uribe has: “Tourism has made people stop living under harassment.” But he affirms that he feels nostalgic when he sees the deforestation in the environment: “Our defense has always been to protect the mountain, because it is also our life.”
With the 2016 peace agreement, the areas controlled by the FARC were freed. It didn’t take long for new illegal armed groups to appear to occupy the deserted space and deforestation skyrocketed. In the last eight years, 247,000 hectares have been lost in Meta.
Jhorman Cruz, Carlos’s brother, rows his float down the canyon. He tries to ensure that no tourist gets stranded on a rock. He spends his days swimming underground, but in his mind the obsession is on the surface: he assures that tourism is the best way to stop deforestation: “If people come from all over the world, the environment will be taken care of. But if logging increases, so will temperatures, less water will come from the moors and our water wonders will dry up.”
Colombia increases its struggles: now the fight against deforestation also stands out. An institutional discourse that also reaches humble tourism initiatives, armed structures and the population.
Anyone from La Uribe is aware of what has happened in their territory. Alberto Arenas has driven ambulances, trucks and today transports tourists around the Guape canyon. According to his perception, in recent times the burning and felling of trees has decreased, since the extinct FARC dissidents are controlling deforestation. During the tour he observes smoke in the distance on a farm: “There they are burning. If they catch them, they take them.”
Despite the peace agreement, the conflict has not ended. Therefore, the first left-wing government in the history of Colombia, headed by Gustavo Petro and Francia Márquez, has started talks with all kinds of armed structures to achieve what it has called ‘total peace’.
The skepticism of certain wealthy urban sectors to the peace processes is far from the communities that live in the middle of the conflict. Aracelia, owner of a humble restaurant, says yes to ‘total peace’. Her life has changed and, finally, since the FARC is no longer here, tourists and new income have arrived.
This is how Atanael Rojas thinks. He is one of the first settlers of La Uribe. He arrived in 1966, when everything was jungle, and he was fleeing a conflict that was already affecting other nearby departments. The fertile lands of Meta attracted people from all over the country, who, in turn, had to resign themselves to being in the midst of the conflict: “I spent a lifetime building this farm so as to throw everything away and be left with nothing.”
He achieved so much that even within his farm there is a natural wonder: the Cascada del Amor. A beautiful waterfall into a crystalline pool, which is also an object of desire for tourists who come to the area. Until there he arrives with Calimar, his horse, which he climbs without difficulty, despite his 82 years. “He had never paid attention to this waterfall,” says Atanael, who is still surprised that his daily life is the exception for so many people.
But he would like many more to visit his house. Neither age nor the decrease in violence prevent Atanael from having a dream: ‘total peace’: “I want my God to grant me to die in peace, because all my life I have been in anxiety. When he was eight years old, he had to sleep in caves, on the coast of a stream like this one”.
A history written in the shadows, which now, with the silence of the guns, awaits the formerly considered “capital” of the FARC, to become the capital of tourism.
